At the base of the limestone cliff he deposited his burden and brought together a little heap of dried reeds and flag blades.  This he fired after many failures by striking together his chisel and a stone.  Rachel hid the blaze from the Nile while he made and lighted a torch of twisted reeds and stamped out the fire.  In the feeble moonlight he discerned a stairway of rough-hewn steps leading into a cavity in the wall.  The southern side of the ascent was sheltered by an outstanding buttress of rock.

He put the torch into Rachel’s hand, and, taking up Deborah, climbed a dozen steps to a dark opening half-closed by a fallen door.  Pushing the obstruction aside with his foot, he entered.  When they were all within he closed the entrance and unrolled the reeds.

There was a helter-skelter of mice past them and a rustle of retiring insects.  The torch blazed brightly and showed him a squat copper lamp on the floor of the outer chamber.  The vessel contained sandy dregs of oil and a dirty floss of cotton.  With an exclamation of surprise Kenkenes lighted the wick, and after a little sputtering, it burned smokily.

“Nay, now, how came a lamp in this tomb?” he asked without expecting an answer.

The chamber was low-roofed and small—­the whole interior rough with chisel-marks.  To the eyes of the sculptor, accustomed to the gorgeous frescoes in the tombs of the Memphian necropolis, the walls looked bare and pitiful.  There were several prayers in the ancient hieroglyphics, but no ancestral records or biographical paintings.  Several strips of linen were scattered over the floor, with the customary litter of dried leaves, dust, refuse brought by rodents, cobwebs and the cast-off chrysalides of insects.  In one corner was a bronze jar, Kenkenes examined it and found it contained cocoanut-oil for burning.

“Of a truth this is intervention of the gods,” he commented, a little dazed, but filling his lamp nevertheless.

Ahead of him was a black opening leading into the second chamber.  He stooped, and entering, held the lamp above his head.  He cried out, and Rachel came to his side.

In the center of the room was a stone sarcophagus of the early, broad, flat-topped pattern.  In one corner was a two-seated bari, in another a mattress of woven reeds.  Leaning against the sarcophagus was a wooden rack containing several earthenware amphorae; on the floor about it was a touseled litter of waxed outer cerements torn from mummies.  All these things they observed later.  Now their wide eyes were fixed on the top of the coffin.  At one time there had been a dozen linen sacks set there, but the mice and insects had gnawed most of them away.  The bottoms and lower halves yet remained, forming calyxes, out of which tumbled heaps of gold and silver rings, zones, bracelets, collars and masks from sarcophagi—­all of gold; images of Isis in lapis lazuli and amethyst; scarabs in garnets and hematite, Khem in obsidian, Bast in carnelian, Besa in serpentine, signets in jasper, and ropes of diamonds which had been Babylonian gems of spoil.